Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] PDF support for phpgw

[Daryl L. L. Houston]

Yeah, I definitely wasn't proposing that PDFLIB be another prerequisite. 
If I get some time over the next few days, maybe I'll see about 
investigating the PDFLIB-independent code and seeing what I can do by 
way of making it intelligent as far as pagination, etc. (if it's not 
already intelligent). Basically, as long as you know your page height 
and your line height and spacing, you just have to keep a tally of where 
you are and run a new_page function every time you hit the limit (or so 
I'd think). I don't really know Lex, but I'm all ears and am willing to 
provide whatever benefit may be derived from my experience having 
written the class I did. It was certainly a trial by fire.

D



Brian Johnson wrote:

> My understanding is that PDFLIB does not have a suitable license for includsion 
> in
> phpgw and people have been trying to avoid requiring add-on software when people
> have enough trouble already with just Apache, php, rdms, and email
>
> I don't really need a report creation interface since these would be static
> templates but I would run into end of page issues as you suggest.
>
>
> Lex had talked about making a report generation tool, perhaps you and he can 
> discuss
> your experiences with the interface.
>
>
>
>
> Daryl L. L. Houston (address@hidden) wrote:
>  
>
> > The problem I guess is with making reports customizable, and that can be
> > tricky when writing PDFs because, unlike HTML, they use absolute
> > coordinates, and if you screw up the coordinates, stuff will just flow
> > off the page. I wrote a class that dynamically generates PDFs based on a
> > rowset, but it assumes that PDFLIB is installed. The class Alessandro
> > pointed to (http://ros.co.nz/pdf/ ) looks pretty nifty at a glance, but
> > there'd still be the problem of how to put together an interface that
> > would allow users to build reports (I've done that too, but I was
> > building reports from one table and with a given format). Actually
> > writing simple PDFs isn't hard; it's making the interface flexible and
> > ensuring that you don't have data trailing off the page because there's
> > too much text in too many columns, etc., that gets a little tricky.
> >
> > D
> >
> >
> >
> > Brian Johnson wrote:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > Well a variety of info including creating invoices from time data.
> > >
> > > I have about 6 reports that I need to concert from MS Access in order to switch 
> > > to
> > > using phpgw as data storage (now that the addressbook splits the orgs and 
> > > persons)
> > >
> > > I thought my first attempt would be a callout list for a service club I belong 
> > > to.
> > >
> > > It is three columns with a header and footer with the data grouped by who the 
> > > name
> > > of the caller.  Each grouping has a header which is the caller's name.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Daryl L. L. Houston (address@hidden) wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> > >
> > > > What kind of data and what sort of PDF layout?
> > > >
> > > > D
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Brian Johnson wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >        
> > > >
> > > > > There was some talk about adding PDF creation support to phpgw
> > > > >
> > > > > Anyone know what the current status of this it?
> > > > >
> > > > > Can anyone give me some help creating some pdf's from phpgw data?
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
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> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >          
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> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >        
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/phpgroupware-developers
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> >
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> >
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